Wrath Release Date

I took the night off of WoW. Dominion was going for progression on Azgalor, but I haven't heard if they were successful.

In the meantime, I wanted to highlight a couple of sites that I think you'll find very helpful.

Jewelcrafting

BananaShoulders has updated his Jewelcrafting Quick Reference Guide with all the new recipes added in 2.4.2. The post contains a PDF version showing every gem and it's bonus in a quick and easy to read format. You'll find his post here. This is an incredible tool for both Jewelcrafters and non Jewelcrafters. I plan to print out his PDF and keep it near the computer at all times.

Siha, if I don't know if you read my blog, but let me say a big 'Thank You' for this.

Stoic Guardian

And speaking of blogs, I've recently added another to my lists of blogs I regularly read. Allow me to introduce The Stoic Guardian. It's written by a fellow Protection Paladin (and a Dwarf, pass the Stout!) I find it really well written and enjoyable.

Wrath Of The Lich King

Also, WoWfix is reporting a release date for Wrath of the Lich King. Okay, it's not an exact release date, but more of a promise to have it out by years end.

What they saw was a press release from Vivendi, which is the company that owns Blizzard. The statement was explaining to investors why Vivendi's made less money in the first quarter (first 3 months of the year) of 2008 than it did in the first quarter of 2007. Basically it says that in first part of 2007 was higher than it normally would have been because of the release of The Burning Crusade. It goes on to say that the 2nd Expansion (Wrath) is scheduled to release the 2nd half of 2008 which could mean anywhere from June 1st to December 31st.

If you've never worked in a publicly traded company, I don't know if you can appreciate how important these press releases are. Every quarter (that is every 3 months), a publicly traded company must report on how it's doing. The major news item it reports is how much money it made or lost, and compares that to the same time frame last year.

The big investment firms then decide if the company should get a "buy", "sell" or "hold" recommendation, and they start either buying, selling or holding stock in that company accordingly. If many people are buying your stock, your stock price goes up. If many people start selling your stock, you stock price goes down. Vivendi's Board of Directors (the big bosses) are paid handsomely (millllllllllions of dollars), and they are paid to do one thing - increase the stock price for their stockholders.

It was very important for Vivendi to explain just why it made almost 25% less money in the first 3 months of 2008 than it did in the first 3 months of 2007. That kind of decline in revenue could indicate a company is weakening causing investment firms to put a "sell" recommendation on it.

Having worked for public companies in the past, I think it will be VERY difficult for Blizzard to hold off a release of Wrath of the Lich King, regardless of what state it may be in. Executives in publicly traded companies can be very short sited, especially around the time the reports must go out. There are often big big bonuses at the end of the year for the Executives based on how much the stock price has increased.

If Vivendi's Board of Director's orders Blizzard CEO to release Wrath, Blizzard has no choice but to release it, EVEN if they know it's unstable/buggy/unbalanced/not ready.

The good new for WoW players is that Blizzard is ahead of schedule. I was part of the Friends and Family Alpha for the Burning Crusade. I would have been in the Beta as well, but my friend who worked at Blizzard was terminated.

We started the Friend and Family Alpha for Burning Crusade around the June/July time frame. At the time, Blizzard was planning a November launch, which as you might know, got pushed back to January. Blizzard has already started the Friends and Family Alpha. We can deduce that they are anywhere from 6 to 8 weeks ahead of where they were with Burning Crusade. If we extrapolate that out, it puts Wrath with an expected completion date of September. It will likely get moved back and end up dropping sometime between mid November and mid December.

Which means Dominion has anywhere from 4 to 7 months to get to Illidan.